Category Archives: Louise

Weekly Wrap-Up::November 7-11, 2011

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The Homeschool Mother's Journal

 

Isn’t this tree gorgeous?

In an already busy household and week, when you add in a birthday celebration, a late-running meeting for Steady Eddie (on a night when he usually takes the girls to dance class, giving me the night “off” ;-) ), and a night at work for me, you have the makings of a sort of crazy week.  We managed to do quite a bit of formal learning this week anyway.    Here’s how the week went:

 Circle Time:

I think we had some semblance of circle time three times this week.  One time we worked on our hymns it while I was bathing the girls and washing their hair!  This is consistently the thing I find hardest to fit into our schedule, so what I’m finding is that I’m having to break down what I want to do (Bible story, memory work, poetry, picture books) into more manageable pieces and stick them in here and there when we find time.  It’s better than not doing it at all, right?  Lulu has completely memorized “Good Morning, Merry Sunshine,” her poetry selection, so I need to find something else for her to memorize.  I’m thinking something Christmas-y would be nice.  Louise almost has “There Once Was a Puffin” down, too, so the same goes for her.

Math:
This week Lulu added subtracting by going down to her skills set, and then we took a break from focusing on subtraction to work on money.  We played Money War several times this week.  Every five lessons or so in RS C a review day is scheduled, and I’m finding this sort of ongoing review of work helpful in seeing what we need more work on.  Lulu completed lessons 40-43 this week. 

Louise completed lessons 67 and 68 in RS A.  This entailed more clock and half-hours practice, as well as a fun little measuring lesson.  Working with Louise on math has been a joy and delight.  We also played a little Addition War on Fun Friday.  We are getting to the place where the girls can play some games together, which is nice.  (Louise even helped me play Money War with Lulu, and I was surprised to learn that she knows many of the coins and can add their values.  Trickle-down, atmospheric learning works!)

Literature, language, and writing:
Lulu completed lessons 19 and 20 in Sequential Spelling this week.  I feel a curriculum change coming on for spelling.  I am not happy with Sequential Spelling.  She did lessons 25-28 in FLL level two, which involved more adjective and contraction work.  I sometimes feel like Lulu would benefit more from a curriculum that requires more reading and less oral learning; she will sometimes even ask me if she can look on the scripted questions and work with me in FLL.  I’m putting off making a decision about this until Christmas break, though.  We were on to week 9 in WWE level two this week, which deals with an excerpt from Pippi Longstocking.  Ah, the joy of Pippi!  Lulu did very well with her summary narrations this week. 

History:

We are so enjoying our study of Native Americans!  We finished the chapters on the people of the lakes and forests in Holling C. Hollings’ Book of Indians, and the girls completed a notebooking page on something they learned about these Native Americans.  We also started Louise Erdrich’s The Birchbark House as our read-aloud to tie in with our history studies, and it is a definite winner.  I’ll have much more to say about all of this in some future posts.

We celebrated Louise’s sixth birthday this week, so on Tuesday we took off before lunchtime and had a short field trip to a local Indian mound.  I hadn’t been here since I was a little girl, and although it’s really just a big hill to climb with a small museum at the bottom of it, we really enjoyed it.

 

 

 From the top we had a nice view of the port of Florence.

The small museum was mostly display cases of artifacts.  However, the docent was knowledgeable and interested in sharing, and I think it was a worthwhile trip to make, steeped as we are right now in things aboriginal.  :-)

Using the drill

 Probably the neatest thing for me this week as far as history goes is when Lulu came into the bathroom where I was getting ready and announced that in Caddie Woodlawn, the Native Americans (yes, she called them Indians) were making a birchbark canoe.  Earlier in the week we had made our own “birchbark” containers out of paper, and we took the time to look up birchbark to find out what it looks like.  I love the layers and connections of our learning-together days.  I love that education has become an atmosphere (to borrow a phrase from Charlotte Mason) in our home. 

Handwriting:
Lulu did a couple pages in her book.  Both girls worked on their months books, copying lines from the poem “The Months” by Christina Rossetti into it.  Lulu did the requisite copywork from WWE.  Louise does a lot of writing in her artwork and drawings, just for fun.  I’m sure there’s more. 

Reading:


I assigned a couple of books for Lulu to read this week, which she did in short order:  Stone Fox by John Reynolds Gardiner, and when she finished this short book very quickly, Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgreen.  She did a book report (like the one I posted here) on Stone Fox, but honestly, it’s hard for me to know exactly how she’s done when I’ve either never read the book myself or it has been so long since I’ve read it that I remember almost nothing about it.  I’m thinking that eventually I want to move into having her keep a reader response journal of some kind, using Jimmie’s writing prompts as a jumping-off place for this.


Louise completed two lessons in OPGTTR this week, and we started working on The Fire Cat by Esther Averill together.  It is very gratifying to me to have almost nurtured another reader into spreading her wings and flying. 

Science:

It was a good science week at our house this week.  This week we talked about the properties of gases:  that they have mass (we said weight) and take up space.  Getting a hard copy of BFSU instead of relying on my Kindle version made it so much easier to see and implement the activities!  We had a few hiccups in carrying out the activities, but all in all things went extremely well.  Instead of being frustrated by them, I try to remember to emphasize (to myself first, then the girls) that “real” scientists face these same problems.  :-)

 
 
 

 The girls made mini-books about the properties of air, and I had Lulu read and narrate a book about air.  We read Feel the Wind by Arthur Dorros.  Have I mentioned that I love science?
 
 Incidental learning and extras:
Although this is neither incidental nor extra, I thought I’d include it here:  Christmas preparations are in full swing here, at least as far as music is concerned.  A big part of our day each day is piano practice time, and both girls are working on Christmas music for their recitals.

 Both girls have speaking parts in the children’s musical at church, so we’re gearing up to work on that, too.  Anybody have any ideas for sheep or flower costumes?  :-)  

What we’re reading:

In addition to her assigned reading, Lulu has enjoyed Mr. Popper’s Penguins (again) this week, even going so far as to underline in the book her favorite passages/sentences.  I think she’s a future book blogger.  ;-)   She has also carried around Caddie Woodlawn a good bit this week, although I doubt she read it from cover to cover this time.  I think she also re-read a Marguerite Henry book, but I’m not sure about that, either.


Together we finished My Brother, the Robot and (oh, yeah!  now I remember!) Lulu immediately took it to her bedroom for rest time and re-read it silently.  Our current read-aloud is the aforementioned Birchbark House.

I finished On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness and loved it.  It would make a fantastic read-aloud for kids slightly older or more daring than mine.  I then started reading Geraldine McCaughrean’s The Glorious Adventures of the Sunshine Queen, promptly misplaced it, and picked up Kekla Magoon’s Camo Girl.  This is knock-your-socks-off middle grade/YA novel that I can’t wait to share here, so stay tuned. 

Fun Friday:
I had planned for us to go on a hike with some homeschooling buddies on Friday, but Louise has had a really nasty cough this week.  Instead, we went to a Veterans Day parade and had lunch with my sister and her family (since she and her boys were off work and out of school for the holiday) at Pizza Hut.   The girls used their Book-It coupons.  :-)   I’m usually at loose-ends on holidays, not knowing whether to truly take the day off (which I really didn’t want to do) or how to handle it, exactly.  The Veterans Day parade was good, and certainly this is a worthwhile thing to do in the transmission of our values. 

We played math games, the girls listened to most of The Door in the Wall during rest time, and we even got outside in the afternoon for a bit of nature study. 

My favorite thing this week:

My favorite thing this week was celebrating my middle child’s sixth birthday.   She got some much longed-for cowboy girl boots, and she has worn them every day since. 

Taking her out for lunch at her favorite Italian restaurant, having Steady Eddie join us, and coming out of the restaurant to see this gorgeous display of autumn splendor made for a very nice day:

That night as Louise and I we were leaving music class together and heading home to her birthday supper, we noticed that the moon was particularly luminous, with a ring of brightness around it, then surrounded by clouds.  Never one to let an Educational Moment slip by, I asked Louise wonderingly, “Why do you think it looks like that?”  She didn’t miss a beat:  “Because it’s someone’s birthday?”  Oh, to see the world through a child’s eyes.  I hope she always thinks the moon shines a bit brighter on her birthday!

As if that weren’t enough to make my entire week, Steady Eddie and I got away on Friday night sans children to see the movie Courageous.

I am blessed.  Thank you, Lord. 

Links to share:
Have you been keeping up with Heart of the Matter Online’s 10 Days of . .  . series?  I’ve been reading along here and there.  Here are my favorites:

Have a lovely weekend, everyone!

Welcome to the museum?!?

Another reader at our house!

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I snapped this picture on Saturday, but I’m sharing it today in honor of someone’s sixth birthday.  Just when I think it’s never going to happen, something clicks with my little reader-in-training and she just takes off.  I think it has as much to do with desire as ability; she has been able to read for a while, but suddenly she wants to read:  a Bible story at bedtime, a board book to the DLM, whatever strikes her fancy.  An added bonus on Saturday was watching Lulu help her along the path. 

It does this homeschooling mama’s heart good.

Weekly Wrap-Up::October 31-November 4, 2011

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The Homeschool Mother's Journal

This has been a good week in our homeschool, even if we did only have three days in the “classroom.”. We took an unprecedented two day-long field trips this week! Here’s a run-down of our book learnin’ this week:

Circle Time:
I think we had circle time twice this week. I’m happy to report that we worked on Latin one of those days! (I failed to mention in last week’s wrap-up that we started Song School Latin, and it is a hit! Lulu ran out to the van as I was leaving one day to tell me vale.) The down side is that I’m struggling right now to know how and when to fit circle time into our days. We used to do it at the traditional time–first thing, right after breakfast, chores, and piano practice. However, because of the DLM’s schedule, it works better for me to get Lulu started on math while I’m giving him his breakfast right after chores and piano practice (he nurses when he first gets up in the morning, so this is the rest of his breakfast ;-) ). Then, of course, I want to go ahead and do math with Louise while I’m in math mode. Before I know it, it’s afternoon rest time and we still haven’t had circle time.

Math:
The RightStart love continues. Lulu completed lessons 38 and 39 in RS C, which included several games of Subtraction Corners. This was her first experience with formal subtraction. This was a little challenging for her at first, but I think she’ll warm up to it. :-)

Louise completed lessons 65 and 66 in RS A. She learned about halves and the half hour. We also played a couple of games of Next Odd or Even and Half-Hour Memory. I think she also voluntarily did several pages of Math Mammoth addition, but I failed to write down which ones. :-)

Literature, language, and writing:

Lulu completed lessons 16-18 in Sequential Spelling and lesson 24 in First Language Lessons level 2. Louise got in on the action for the language lesson; both girls are making a book of the months (except we’re using Rossetti’s “The Months” instead of the poem suggested in FLL because Louise memorized Rossetti’s poem earlier this year.).

Lulu completed week 8 of Writing with Ease level 2 this week. The passages for this week’s lesson is from The Jungle Book, and it seemed to me like this week there was a big jump in difficulty, mainly because of the length of the passages. Lulu’s narrations tend to be lengthy too, with compound sentences, so dictation can be a challenge. Do you correct your child’s spelling when he does dictation?  On the upside, Louise recognized a Golden Books/Disney version of The Jungle Book as the story I read aloud for Lulu’s lesson.  :-)

History:
We’re taking a break from SotW for the next couple of months to do some holiday related studies. This week we started on a unit about Native Americans, a topic that my girls and I all find very interesting. I think I’ll save the resources we’re using for another post and simply share a picture of the pumpkin we cooked on Friday, Ojibwa style:

Before

 

After

Handwriting:
Handwriting continues to be a bane in our homeschool, at least as far as the teacher is concerned. Lulu did work in her Getty-Dubay book, completing about five pages. I failed to give Louise any handwriting assignments, except for the copy work she did for the months book. I reconcile myself to this by telling myself that she writes plenty on her own.

Reading:

I had Lulu start on Detectives in Togas this week, but after she told me it was too scary for her and she awakened us early Wednesday morning after having a nightmare, we shelved that one for the time being. Instead, I gave her The Cabin Faced West by Jean Fritz, and she read it in very short order.


Louise completed lesson 93 in OPGTTR. I continue to write her lessons on the white board; this makes such a difference in her ability and willingness to do the lessons.  She and I are working on There Is a Carrot in My Ear and Other Noodle Tales by Alvie Schwartz, which is a perfect early reader for her almost six year old sense of humor. 

 

Science:
I am happy to report that this was a science heavy week this week. I have a science-y blog post swirling
about in my mind, but until it takes some sort of comprehensible shape, I’ll just hit the high points: we completed one lesson from Building Foundations for Scientific Understanding in which we discussed matter and its three states. We discussed it, categorized things, made some observations (ice, water, boiling water), and read What Is the World Made Of?   The girls made books about the three states of matter. Lulu also read another nonfiction title on the subject and did a written narration (dictated to me) and drew a picture. On Tuesday we went to the McWane Science Center in Birmingham, and on Friday we went to Adventure Science Center in Nashville. Tuesday’s trip was a long one because we traveled with Steady Eddie. He had to be in Birmingham at 7:30 in the morning, which is about 1.5 hours before the McWane Center opens. When we got there, the girls and I sat in the van for a while and I read to them.  My mom kept the DLM, which really freed me to focus on the girls and have a good learning day with them. We saw a fantastic movie at the IMAX theater there–Born to be Wild. The neatest thing was that the girls got a personal science demonstration about the states of matter when one of the McWane employees voluntarily got out the “really cold stuff” And showed them all kinds of things about liquid nitrogen. It really couldn’t have been better if I had planned it, especially since we were studying the states of matter.

 

Our Friday trip to Adventure Science Center was just as good, although it was probably more about the fun activities than it was real science observation and discovery.  Steady Eddie and the DLM went with us, and we met up with some homeschool friends there.  The girls really enjoyed the human body exhibit. 

The DLM enjoyed the nature exhibit.

 

Incidental learning and extras:
The girls have had a good time this week organizing a store on the steps to the school room, selling or giving away tickets to it, and making things to sell.


One day when they were outside playing while I fixed lunch, they came in excitedly, bringing me a leaf with an immature ladybug on it. They had noticed a drawing of the life cycle of the ladybug one day in the book What Is a Living Thing?, and they immediately made the connection between the the larval and pupal states of the ladybug and some little critters they had seen outside on the picnic table. They were so excited to recognize the beetles and bring me proof. I loved it!

The girls have also enjoyed doing a few lessons this week from Mark Kistler’s Mini-Marshmallow Video Art Lessons.  I’ve already noticed an increase in their abilities and willingness to draw since doing a few of these. 

What we’re reading:
We stopped by a really good Goodwill store on our way to Nasville on Friday, and I am happy to report that our largest purchase was a nice stack of books.  Lulu picked up Little House in the Green Groves by Cynthia Rylant and read it on the trip.   (Yes, I’m
something of a purist when it comes to classic literature, but I’m willing to indulge Lulu’s passionate interest in all things Laura Ingalls Wilder by supplementing her reading with additional stories.) 
 She then started in on yet another Marguerite Henry book, Sea Star. 

I’m still reading On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness, but I hope to finish it this weekend.  Look for a review sometime next week!

 We are about two chapters away from finishing My Brother, the Robot as our read-aloud. 


The biggest news is that Louise is slowly but surely becoming a voluntary reader!  On Thursday night, she read several one-page Bible stories from the Read with Me Bible, one of many of the Bible story books we have lying around. 

It’s working!  :-)

 

My favorite thing this week:

Aside from eating at Jim ‘n Nick’s Bar-B-Q on the way home from Birmingham Tuesday evening, I guess my favorite things about this week were spending so much time in fun, educational edutainment venues with my family.  Of course, it’s hard to top watching another one of my children spread her wings as a reader.  I’ll take that any day!

School Day Snapshot–August 22, 2011

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Not Back to School Blog HopI documented our day today in order to participate in this year’s {Not} Back-to-School Blog Hop over at Heart of the Matter Online.  It’s day-in-the-life week, which is probably my favorite week of the entire thing.  It’s fun and instructive to look back at last year’s post to see how things went here at the House of Hope, and I always enjoy others’ posts (and sometimes even learn something new to try!)  This year I’m schooling a seven year old girl and a five year old girl, with a fourteen month old boy along for the ride.  Here’s how the day went:

Well, we all know that the new day begins the night before, right?  Ours did literally last night, with the DLM awake a total of three times through the night.  Arrrrgh!  Nothing squelches my desire to get up extra early to get all those things done that I really need to do (like exercise, have extended devotional time, work on chores, read, and blog) like a lack of sleep.  I went to sleep around 11:00 and was awakened around 12:15 by his cries.  I got up and nursed him back to sleep, which took about an hour.  Steady Eddie answered his cries the next two times, bless him.  I thank God for my hardworking husband who still pulls as many nightshifts as I do! 

5:30 a.m.–The alarm went off, and I managed to “snooze” until 6:30. 

7:00–Lulu was up by the time I got out of the shower.  After showering, I started breakfast prep.  Lulu read A Cricket in Times Square while she ate.  Steady Eddie got Louise up at about 7:15 and he left at about 7:30.  The girls and I ate breakfast.  I had oatmeal with a dollop of peanut butter, honey, and raisins.  Lulu, my pickiest eater and my breakfast avoider, ate most of a blueberry bagel and some canned fruit.  Louise ate–well, I’m not sure what Louise ate, and I didn’t write it down.  I think she ate frosted mini wheats.  We eat really healthy breakfasts around here.  :-)

 

I read the Bible during breakfast (silently–this was my devotion time!), and Psalm 33:20-22 jumped out at me:

20 We wait in hope for the LORD;
   he is our help and our shield.
21 In him our hearts rejoice,
   for we trust in his holy name.
22 May your unfailing love be with us, LORD,
   even as we put our hope in you.

 7:30-9:30–We did all our pre-school day stuff.  I’ve been trying to get another household task in during this period–laundry folded, floors vacuumed, or bathroom cleaned.  That didn’t happen today.  I also try to start school by 9:00; again, this didn’t happen today.  Here’s what we did accomplish:

  • We unloaded the dishwasher.
  • The girls did their kitchen chores.  (They usually make up their beds when they first get up.)
  • I awakened and nursed the DLM.
  • The girls brushed their teeth.
  • The girls both practiced the piano (with my oversight). 
  • We took a morning walk.  :-)

 

9:30-10:20–Circle Time–We did all our usual stuff:  Bible story, prayer, memory work, poetry, and a couple of picture books.  I also gave the girls a “free” lecture on having a good attitude.  It wasn’t my proudest mommy moment of our homeschool day.  :-)   All of this was done with the DLM climbing over us, taking the girls’ notebooks, and me finally nursing him, just to give us a moment of peace and quiet.  I’m just keepin’ it real here, folks. 

Circle Time aftermath

It was about this time I really needed the calming influence of Psalm 33–if only I had remembered it!  ;-)

10:20-10:30–All the kids had snacks (fruit!) while I switched out the laundry.  I also made the girls take a bathroom break so as to avoid having to quit in mid-sentence for someone to run “upstairs” to the potty.

10:30-10:50–The girls worked on their book logs.  This wasn’t without its problems, though:  I had to go back to the computer to print out some handwriting paper for both girls.  The DLM swiped my dry erase marker (and I couldn’t find it!) just when I needed it to show Louise how to make a lowercase t.  Louise’s questions prompted me to have her take out her handwriting book and work on a few pages.  Lulu didn’t finish copying all of the titles into her book log–she has been a reading machine lately, so I told her she could save some for tomorrow.

10:50–I sent Louise upstairs so Lulu could do her history narration.  Just as I was trying to read a bit from chapter three in SotW, the DLM got extremely cranky.  At 10:56 I took him up to his room and put him in her bed with some books.  He wasn’t happy, but we managed to get through Lulu’s history narration.  Louise re-joined us for the rest of the history reading (I only read two parragraphs for Lulu to narrate). 

 11:06–I nursed and rocked the DLM to sleep.  :-)

11:30–Lulu and I worked on her RightStart Math lesson.  She was supposed to use a thermometer and graph today’s temperature, but the thermometer was broken.  We’ll have to try that again.  Meanwhile, Louise built towers out of Wedgits and “read.”

12:00–Louise and I did her RightStart Math lesson while Lulu attempted to work on some pages from Math Mammoth.  She couldn’t figure out how to do it, though, so I instructed her instead to read a science book to narrate later.

12:20–Lulu did her science narration.

12:30-1:00–Lunch prep, eating, and clean-up.  Today’s lunch selections:  I had tuna salad sandwich and chips; the girls had cheese quesadillas and chips.  We all had cantaloupe.  I read a chapter from Hans Brinker while the girls finished eating.  

1:00–Lulu read the epilogue of The Rise and Fall of Mount Majestic, her assigned reading.  Louise and I did a reading lesson from OPGTTR.

Lulu's "in between" reading selection: The Adventures of Odysseus + Lulu's tower

1:15–I gave Lulu the choice of doing a regular narration over Mount Majestic (which I realize is way too long for a narration–I just wanted to discuss it with her, really) or completing a book report notebooking page, and of course, she choose the cool-looking notebooking page.  I really thought it would be over her seven-year old head to do all of that–the elements of the novel like plot, character, setting, etc., but she surprised me!  The only thing we didn’t tackle was theme, and she wanted to try that!  This made me feel much better about the disrupted narration earlier in the morning.

 Whew!  Now it’s time to clean up a bit!

 

The DLM woke up with a stinky diaper just in time for the girls to have rest time.  :-)   The girls went to separate rooms, Lulu with The Cricket in Times Square and Louise with the iPod “tuned” to Beatrix Potter stories.  (She requested The Tailor of Gloucester.)  I then gave the DLM his late lunch (cheese and grapes) and worked a bit on my blog (Read Aloud Thursday is coming up day after tomorrow, you know!) and did a little Facebooking.  :-)

The girls’ hour-long rest time was over at about 3:00, so after they ate yet another snack (pudding this time), we headed out to the library.  I found Lulu a copy of The Twelve Labors Of Hercules, which prompted her to announce to the librarian:  “I love Greek mythology,” and I was a proud, nerdy homeschooling mama. ;-)

The rest of the evening was filled with the minutiae of daily life:  supper prep, supper, nursing the DLM and his unexpectedly taking another nap, etc.  After supper, Steady Eddie took all the children to a birthday party at one of our local splash pads, and here I sit, reflecting on our day. 

It has been a good one–pretty typical, really, with lots of frustraton but also lots of good moments.  I thank God for the privilege of our learning and growing together as a family.  It’s a good life. 

 

School Room Redux

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I took these pictures on Sunday night when the room was somewhat clean.  I had hoped to get it really, really clean, but you know what?  That’s just not happening these days around the House of Hope.  So, overlook the clutter and errant baby sock, and come on in!

We’ve had a school room since we’ve been official homeschoolers, beginning when Lulu was a newly-minted kindergartener.  We enclosed our garage, which resulted in a large-ish room with high ceilings and a somewhat odd configuration, what with a closet and laundry room creating a hallway of sorts leading down from our kitchen and an external door opposite.  We are somewhat limited in the way we can arrange the furniture due to both the shape, our abundance of furniture, and where the electrical outlets are located.  However, we did rearrange things a bit this summer, changing up the original arrangment.

This is looking down at the room from the kitchen:


This is a closer-up view of the reading corner.   This is where we’ve begun having circle time just this week.  (Before this it was up in the den area of our home, near the DLM’s toys, but also on the floor.)  I don’t like sitting on the floor, so I always send the girls to our bedroom to get all the decorative pillows that should be on our bed (but are usually piled either in the floor or on the trunk at the foot of the bed).  The pillows are squished pretty flat now, but at least they’re useful.  :-)   I’d like to have a few beanbags or some big floor pillows to leave down in the school room, but that’s pretty low on my list of things to do right now. [That's all our RightStart math stuff in those crates.  Steady Eddie started organizing it and ran out of time.]

Here’s a picture of our two sets of cubbies/shelves.  These hold all sorts of miscelleanea, mostly of the educational variety.  There are puzzles and games, books, and I don’t really know what-all.  The girls also have a cubby each, to hold their notebook bins.  Above this set of shelves is our new whiteboard and a line for pinning up artwork to dry.

On top of the cubbies are the cornerstones of our homeschool:  lots and lots of books and the necessary paper.  :-)

Circle Time books and materials in the red basket:

Library basket:

Baskets and bins of picture books that aren’t categorized:

Opposite this wall is my command center.  In the old configuration the table was in front of my teacher cabinet (a repurposed changing table!), but I felt rather claustrophobic.  Now the table is backed up to the wall–we’ll see how it goes.  It’s inconvenient, really, but if it helps me feel less like I’m being overrun, I’ll take it!  Also in this picture:  old canvases and a bulletin board, just waiting for a new home; a nature shelf that is sorely in need of attention (and maybe even putting away for safekeeping until the DLM no longer eats what he finds); and the DLM’s play yard, which hasn’t seen much use lately.

I sort of left all of my regular readers hanging when I posted these pictures back in June, but here you can see the final result:  a couple of jam-packed, hand-me-down bookcases, all organized according to categories, and all the books entered into my Google account. 

Now if I “happen upon” a used book sale ;-) , I can call up my home library holdings and find out if we “need” a copy of a treasure I’ve found.  Of course, this is purely dependent on Steady Eddie being with me (and is therefore somewhat unlikely) because he is the only one in our household with a smart phone. 

Do you want a closer look?

Atop the bookcases are my bins.  I just hope I don’t hurt myself taking down the history bin.  It’s heavy–I can’t just leave this year’s history books on the shelf because there would be nothing new to share after a week of Lulu having access to them. 

That’s mostly it.  I could show you our dirty aquarium, but I won’t.  I could show the tall, skinny bookcase beside our computer armoire, stuffed full of teacher books, a CD player/radio that isn’t currently plugged into a power source but for which I have high hopes, and my what’s mostly left of my scrapbooking stash after I decided to get rid of my scrap clutter and try to go digital.  But I won’t.  Oh, and there’s the closet, which is somewhat organized, thanks to Steady Eddie.  (Have I ever mentioned that I am severely lacking in organizational skills?)

Instead I’ll end this lengthy post with the sign on our door that leads out to the driveway.  Lulu loves to write and draw, and she frequently puts up signage.  To be honest, I have no idea how long this one has been there, but I think it’s pretty funny. 

It says, “No boys allowed.  No girls allowed.  Only us.” 

That says it all, doesn’t it?:-)

I’m linking up at Heart of the Matter Online {Not} Back-to-School Blog Hop.  It’s school room week, in case you haven’t heard.  :-)

Year Three Day One: Making Something Sweet

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"Second Graders and Kindergarteners" by Louise

Today was the first day of our third official year of homeschooling.  When I planned for today, I decided to do something rather uncharacteristic of me:  I planned to make today “fluffy”–somewhat unstructured and, dare I say it?–fun.  Part of this came from my near burn-out at the end of last year.  I had so many things on my plate, and homeschool was just one more very stressful thing that I had to do.  I have lived in dread of starting this new year because I realistically expect it to be more difficult than years past because I am officially schooling two now and we have the little game-changer, the DLM.  My stress and over-scheduling of last year led me to make what I think are going to be positive changes in our school–we’re really cutting back the redundancy (i.e. doing copywork for a grammar lesson and for writing) and focusing on the basics of a Charlotte Mason education–short lessons, full attention, and narration of almost everything we read, both read-alouds and Lulu’s independent reads. 

Today the girls and I had breakfast, the girls did some of their chores, and we had an abbreviated circle time at the kitchen table (not my preferred location, for sure) while I fed the DLM his breakfast.  Lulu read a Bible story (appropriately enough, the Mary vs. Martha story) and then I read The Book of Beasts by E. Nesbit, a perfectly delightful story and perfect for this first day of kindergarten for Louise and second grade for Lulu.

Since breakfast was finished, we then convened to the school room to survey our new white board and learn today’s agenda:

We reviewed a hymn, and then we scurried away, anxious to get on with the real fun of the day:  swimming with some friends.  We swam for a few hours, had lunch with our friends, and headed home.  Our time in the van to and from our friends’ home was spent listening to the next-to-last CD from The Story of the World audiobook.  History just sort of fizzled out for us at the end of last year, so I wanted the girls to go back and review some of what we did read and hear for the first time what we didn’t read.  I stopped the CD after a section or a chapter and had the girls give me oral narrations.

The DLM went to sleep on the way home, so rest time was the next order of business.  After rest time, I surprised the girls with the “following directions activity” denoted on the whiteboard:  we made cookies together, with one catch:  my primary job was to read the recipe and give directions; theirs was to carry out my directions. (I got the idea from this post of Janet’s, and the lecture series Janet writes about in that same post.)

Making the cookies was relaxing to me.  I loved having a leisurely day in which a fair amount of schoolish activities took place.  Sure, we didn’t do a lot of “book work”–none, actually, if that necessitates writing (except for the writing the girls did on their own), but I still feel good about how today went.

This is how I’m looking at homeschooling this year. 

  • It will be messy.  Being with my children all day long is messy, both literally and figuratively.  They make messes.  We clean up messes.  They fight.  We figure it out.  They whine.  I discipline.  And on it goes.  It’s okay.

  • It will be hard.  Some of the things we do will be hard, for them and for me.  I’m not always in my comfort zone.  I stretch them.  They stretch me.  It’s okay.  We’re growing together.

  • Some of the stuff that we do that doesn’t count actually counts more than the stuff that does.  (Huh?)  Yeah.  Not everything that’s important can be reduced down to a page from a book of lesson plans. 

Yes, this year will be hard.  I know it will be.  But it will be good. 

Their childhoods are over in a flash, and I can’t think of a better way for us to spend them. 

Thank you, Lord, for the blessing of homeschooling.

Weekly Wrap-Up::July 25-29, 2011

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This has been a week of no (official) schooling here at the House of Hope, but I’m writing up a post anyway because I want to think about how much covert learning took place, despite my lack of micromanaging every little bit of it. ;-)   (Surely I’m not the only one who does that. . . ) 

Steady Eddie had the week off, which is always nice both because I really like him and spending time with him ranks pretty high on my list of favorite things to do and because it’s always nice to have help in the childcare department.  :-)   This is what our week looked like:

Sunday:  We attended a wonderful local production of the stage version of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

Monday–school planning

Tuesday–trip to the zoo in 1000 degree heat and 150% humidity

The curls in the DLM's hair attest to the humidity and heat at the zoo on Wednesday!

Wednesday–swimming in the morning for me and the kids while SE tackled the jungle that was our yard; check-up for the DLM at the pediatrician in the afternoon; church at night

Thursday–blogging and house cleaning in the morning; swimming for all in the afternoon; games and playtime at night

Today–more school planning and grocery shopping

Here are some of the things I’ve noted this week that the girls have done in the way of learning activities, and all mostly of their own accord:

  • Lulu played a couple of games of chess with SE on Monday night.  We have a beginning, learn-how-to-play chess set that simplifies the game somewhat.  They had a fabulous time together!
  • Meanwhile, Louise and I played Connect Four and tried to keep the DLM from making off with the checkers.

  • Both girls observed lots of animals at the zoo, of course, but most notably, they observed bees in an indoor hive.  This, then, prompted Lulu to pull out The Magic School Bus Inside a Beehive when we got home and read it.  I love that!

  • Lulu has been on yet another Laura Ingalls Wilder kick this week.  (Actually, she never completely quits reading these books!)  This week she’s been enjoying The Long Winter (perhaps to give herself a viacarious escape from the heat?) and Little Town on the Prairie.  I think she has also spent some time with Around the World in 80 Tales.
  • Louise listened to part of The Tale of Peter Rabbit and Other Stories narrated by Jim Weiss.
  • Last night we played Qwirkle.  Although the game eventually fell apart because we had a cranky baby and sleepy and tired girls on our hands, it was fun while it lasted!

  • Louise has spent a lot of time in imaginative play this week.  Oh, the costumes this girls concocts!
  • Lulu, who up until now has been completely uninterested in learning to spell, has been quizzing SE and me on how to spell certain words (mostly ones from the environment here at home) and writing them on a slate. 

Well, you get the idea.  I love watching how they spend their free time in ways that really support and enhance their learning. They are learning all the time–a lifestyle of learning!

Next week we have another round of swimming lessons and some minimal lessons to finish up.  Then we’ll pick up with our new school year the next week.

Extra picture of the DLM, just because he's cute.

I’m linking up at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers. 

Have a great weekend!

Summer School

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I leave the almost-kindergartener to her own devices while I work with Lulu on math or some such.  Louise is great at entertaining herself, and I love hearing her little under-her-breath conversations.  One day this week, though, she felt inspired to set up a little school of her own. :-)   I think the bunny and the bathing suited bear are a little too relaxed to really be learning anything, don’t you?  ;-)

More Summer Reading

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 For this month’s Kids’ Picks post, I thought I’d elaborate a little bit more on what my girls have enjoyed this summer.

I more or less gave Lulu, age 7, free rein to pick out what she wanted to read for the summer reading programs we’ve participated in this summer.  She read lots and lots of chapter books for one of the programs, and as you can see, she consistently worked through the JF War’s.  ;-)   Looking at her list, the only titles I can see my own hand in are Henry and Beezus (not a hard sell since she loves Ramona), a biography of Phillis Wheatley (whom she was already familiar with due to this picture book), and The Courage of Sarah Noble.  There’s a fair amount of American Girl and My America books on there, too.  This girl loves history!  In addition to the Boxcar Children, etc., I’ve noticed her picking up a few books we’ve read bits and pieces of during the school year, some of which I’ve left about the house, hoping to get back to them later.  In homeschooling circles this kind of baiting is known as strewing, although in our case it’s more accidental than anything.  (In other words, the books are literally strewn all over the house because we’re sort of messy that way.)  

She has read The Adventures of Odysseus, an adaptation that I set out to read aloud as a follow-up to our Greek studies, but I didn’t get past the first chapter.  It caught Lulu’s attention!  Since beginning our globetrotting adventures this summer, I’ve been reading from Around the World in 80 Tales, which is a collection of folktales from around the world.  (I plan to review this one, so stay tuned!)  It has been her book-of-choice to accompany her in the van on errands on more than one occasion.  There has also been the surreptitious reading of “just one more chapter” in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader,  our current read-aloud.  She has also enjoyed a biography of Helen Keller, yet another book I hope to write up a post about in the near future. 

Lulu has developed into a reader who will indeed read whatever is put before her:  newspapers (beware!), cereal boxes, billboards, what-have-you.  I couldn’t be happier about this, even if I do find myself having to censor the headlines now and then.  :-)   I’ve noticed a change this summer, at least in the past week or two.  There have been at least two different occasions when Lulu has declined to sit and listen to a book because she was engrossed in her own story.  While I’ll admit this makes me a little bit sad, isn’t this what I’ve been after all along?  It brings me such joy to see her love reading so much, even if I do have to tell her over and over and over and over again to stop reading and unload the dishwasher.  :-)

(By the way, the book titles on her booklog are marked out because at this library, chapter book readers were awarded a stamp for every fifty pages read.  When they filled up a card (500 pages), they were entered into a weekly drawing for a cash prize. Lulu read somewhere in the neighborhood of 3,000 pages, I think, but alas, she didn’t win anything besides hours and hours of pleasure, spent with books.)

Louise, age 5 1/2, has quite eclectic taste in books.  We read a lot of holiday books after going to  this particular library because they have their holiday picture books separated on one row of shelves, and it happens to be the first row (and the most accessible, it seems).  I admit that sometimes I put back a book or two–I just can’t stomach reading too many Christmas books when it’s 100 degrees outside!  Besides Christmas books, we often end up with a good number of nonfiction picture books.  I’ve already noted our enjoyment of Picture Book Biographies by David Adler.  Louise is very likely to bring home several Magic Schoolbus books on any given library run, too.  Really, if it involves sitting in mommy’s lap (or under the crook of mommy’s arm) and reading, Louise is there.  She’s not very picky.  :-)

For more Kids’ Picks post, check out 5 Minutes for Books!